The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between parental
attribution and self-perception in parenting roles according to parenting success
or failure situations. A total of 138 mothers who have toddlers in Seoul and
other big cities in Korea completed questionnaires, and data were analyzed by
paired t-test, Pearson's correlation coefficient, Fisher’s Z score, and multiregression.
The results are as follows: First, mothers in parenting success
situations showed higher parental attribution than mothers in parenting failure
situations. Second, correlations between parental attribution and self-perception
in parenting roles turned out to be significantly different between parenting
success situations and failure situations. Third, both internal attribution such as
ability and effort, and external attribution such as child behavior and task
difficulty, significantly predicted self-perception in parenting roles including
equilibrium feeling, competence, satisfaction and parenting investment, especially
in parenting failure situations. The implications of the difference in parental
attribution between parenting success and failure situations have been discussed.